The present invention relates generally to a bottle-control system and, more particularly, to apparatus for aligning randomly oriented bottles of neck-leading and neck-trailing dispositions such that they are advanced to a bottle-collecting means all in a common neck-trailing disposition.
Pharmaceutical companies and other manufacturers sell millions of fluid-filled bottles yearly, such as medicine sprays and cleanser droplet-dischargers, and employ various mechanical devices to treat and fill the bottles with the appropriate contents as rapidly and effectively as possible. The bottles, in an empty condition, are usually simply randomly batched into a holding-tank or the like equipped with means for discharging the bottles one-by-one in succession at-random in neck-leading and neck-trailing dispositions to a conveyor. The conveyor advances the bottles through various stations at which the bottles are commonly oriented each first into a neck-trailing disposition and then into a neck-up disposition, and then cleaned or filled or otherwise treated preparatory to being packaged, stored and sold.
The present invention relates particularly to apparatus which operates upon bottles of shoulder-and neck construction, and includes means for discriminating between a bottle advancing in a neck-leading disposition from a bottle advancing in a neck-trailing disposition, the discriminating means functioning to invert those bottles of neck-leading disposition each to a neck trailing disposition.
A number of devices for discriminating between bottles of neck-leading disposition and bottles of neck-trailing disposition are already known in the art such as, for example, the respective devices disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,339,702, issued on Sept. 5, 1967 to R. F. Novak et al., and U.S. Pat. No. 3,894,628, issued on July 15, 1975 to A. G. Pugh. The discriminating devices disclosed in these patents are capable of altering ("inverting") the disposition of those bottles of neck-leading disposition each to a neck-trailing disposition, and are associated with means for thereafter advancing each of the bottles in neck-trailing disposition to various processing stations at which the bottles are collected and treated.
The object of utilizing mechanical means to orient the bottles in succession, clearly, is to operate upon as many of the bottles as possible in the least amount of time. Each and every stage of manipulating the bottles is a potential means of lost time and must be as efficient as possible so as not to interfere with maximized output. Clearly, when a bottle of neck-leading disposition is in the process of being inverted from a neck-leading disposition to a neck-trailing disposition, there results a delay in the rate of advancement of bottles upstream of (behind) the one being inverted, thereby restricting the number of bottles that can be inverted and further advanced in a given allotment of time.
A disadvantage associated with the devices disclosed in the aforementioned U.S. patents is that the disclosed discriminating means for inverting the bottles is not associated with an efficient means for assisting it to rapidly eject and accelerate the bottles therefrom and enable the very next bottle immediately upstream thereof to be advanced thereto rapidly for similar manipulation. As a result, the entire bottle-manipulating process is not as efficient as it might otherwise be. It is just such a disadvantage that is overcome by the present invention.